Arabica Robusta - Bookmarks

Nadingar said plans to start work on a new 60,000 bpd refinery within the next month or two were likely to be delayed because of the recent fighting. "There are contracts to finalise. That will slip a bit," he said.

Tags: chad, petroleum, doba, industry, violence, rebellion, unrest on 2008-07-16 -All Annotations (1) -About

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The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq, By Richard Manning (Harper's Magazine)

Tags: petroleum, industry, food, security, agriculture, energy, harper, manning, iraq on 2008-07-16 and saved by6 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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“In this situation, we
cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships
which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so,
we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere
on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”“The
day is not far off,” Kennan concluded, “when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.”
As Kennan recognized, however, the maintenance of such a concentration of wealth often requires violent action. Agriculture
is a recent human experiment. For most of human history, we lived by gathering or killing a broad variety of nature's offerings.
Why humans might have traded this approach for the complexities of agriculture is an interesting and long-debated question,
especially because the skeletal evidence clearly indicates that early farmers were more poorly nourished, more disease-ridden
and deformed, than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries. Farming did not improve most lives. The evidence that best points
to the answer, I think, lies in the difference between early agricultural villages and their pre-agricultural counterparts—the
presence not just of grain but of granaries and, more tellingly, of just a few houses significantly larger and more ornate
than all the others attached to those granaries. Agriculture was not so much about food as it was about the accumulation of
wealth. It benefited some humans, and those people have been in charge ever since.

To Lend or Not To Lend:

This Article will use the Chad/Cameroon project to illustrate why the World Bank should adopt a realistic and pro-active approach to human rights problems. Part II will examine the evolving interpretation of the Bank’s mandate and the historical inconsistencies in its policy toward human rights issues. This examination will show that there are no theoretical obstacles preventing the Bank from interpreting its mandate liberally to include human rights considerations. Part III will draw on the development of the Chad/Cameroon pipeline controversy in order to highlight the importance of human rights considerations for the project’s success. Part IV will argue in favor of the adoption of a more open and consistent human rights policy as an essential condition to improving the credibility of the Bank’s operations. This reformulation is essential if the Bank aims to serve as the guardian of fairness in private investment and to improve the economic well-being of countries like Chad.

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, human, rights, harvard, international, development, world, bank, industry on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Policy support instrument: Helping hand or more thumb screws? (Bretton Woods Project)

In October, the IMF board approved the establishment of a Policy Support Instrument (PSI), a non-lending programme which will provide policy advice to poor countries and send a signal to donors and markets about the quality of a country's economic policies. Critics suspect the instrument is little more than a new way "to extend Fund domination".

Tags: psi, imf, international, finance, development on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: IMF policy approaches

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Facilitating whose power? WB and IMF policy influence in Nigeria's energy sector (Bretton Woods Project)

Though the volume of donor financing to Nigeria is much less than to other sub-Saharan African countries, at a policy level the World Bank, the IMF and DFID are highly influential in the country's macro-economy.

Tags: international, development, world, bank, nigeria, africa, petroleum, industry, electricity, obasanjo, PSI, paris, club, privatization, nedp on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: IMF policy approaches

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Nigeria was the first country to "benefit" from the IMF's policy support instrument (PSI) (a non-lending instrument which began in mid-2005, see Update 48), to which reform of the power sector is central. The PSI was central to the cancellation of Nigeria's foreign debt with the Paris Club in 2005, which needed IMF endorsement for the deal to go ahead. Former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, now managing director of the World Bank played a key role in the agreement.
key ingredients of the IMF's PSI were controversially passed during president Obasanjo's last few days in office, leading to a national strike in June 2007. These included the sale of the Kaduna and Port Harcourt oil refineries; the sale of the Egbin power station and other national assets; an increase in the cost of petroleum products; an increase in value added tax; and the non-implementation of the 15 per cent increase in civil service salaries.
The sale of the Eleme Petrochemicals plant, in Port Harcourt, was a structural reform of the PSI in October 2005. The plant is the largest of its kind on the continent. National newspapers report that it was sold for approximately $225 million to the Nigerian subsidiary of the Indonesian firm, Indorama Group. The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers described this amount as "not worth the spare parts available at the plant".⁴
The World Bank funded the implementation of the bill for the implementation of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). NEITI is central to the energy question in Nigeria, particularly in light of the failure to channel massive oil and gas revenues to for the benefit of national development. NEITI was developed together with the procurement bill and the freedom of information bill. However, in the event only NEITI was approved by both the Senate of the National Assembly and the House of Representatives, and with a significant amendment. This appeared without explanation, at the last minute and allows much greater leeway to oil companies over the issue of disclosure. To the provision on the power of NEITI to obtain information from companies' volume of sales of oil, gas and other minerals extracted was added the caveat that "provided that such information shall not be used in any manner prejudicial to the contractual obligation of proprietary interests of the extractive industry company". According to the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, these clauses have the potential "to defeat the entire essence of the transparency campaign in the extractive industry". Despite this blatant violation of both due process and disclosure, the IMF praised the NEITI bill as "good progress in efforts to improve governance and reduce corruption". The bill was passed by the Nigerian Senate in May 2007, days before the end of Obasanjo's tenure.

allAfrica.com: Nigeria: FG Dumps IMF's Policy Support Instrument (Page 1 of 1)

Tags: nigeria, finance, imf, news, PSI, allafrica.com on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About

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War in Chad: World Bank-backed oil project hasn’t created promised “model” of development—By Ken Silverstein (Harper's Magazine)

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, world, bank, industry, news, international, development on 2008-07-13 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Ethical Corporation

Ethical Corporation is an independent media firm, launched in 2001 to encourage debate and discussion on responsible business. Ethical Corporation publishes a 60-page print magazine ten times a year, a daily website, and hosts business ethics conferences all over the world. EC also publishes the new online magazine www.ClimateChangeCorp.com, launched in February 2007, and has a research arm, The Ethical Corporation Institute, created in 2006, which sells reports and produces research into emerging areas related to responsible business.

Tags: business, csr, environment, ethics, magazine, media, sustainability, corporation, corporate, led, globalization on 2008-07-13 and saved by11 people -All Annotations (1) -About

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Arabica Robusta's Bookmarks

Power, passion, and neoliberalism - Transnational Institute

Report: World Bank Still Not Lending With Environment in Mind - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog

Sudan and the International Criminal Court: a guide to the controversy | open Democracy News Analysis

A Kodak moment: The not-so-historic Talabani-Barak handshake

The IFC's lessons of experience & the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project (Bretton Woods Project)

A LA UNE! | TchadForum.com

For Global Trade Talks, the Stakes Have Risen - NYTimes.com

Doha Dealbreaker - WSJ.com

Foreign Policy In Focus | The WTO's Raw Deal on Services

A Shortage of Democracy, Not Food

“Biofuels Behind World Food Crisis”- World Bank

Paul Wolfowitz - Good Governance and Development—A Time For Action, Jakarta, Indonesia,

Chad fighting hits oil prospecting, not output | Reuters